Ethan Frome
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50 free Ethan Frome trivia questions with answers — literature quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Edith Wharton's Ethan Frome is a short book and a bleak one. In a handful of chapters it follows a poor Massachusetts farmer, his ailing wife and the young woman who comes to help in the house, and it ends on a reversal that readers argue about long after they close it. This quiz covers the whole book: the prologue and the stranger who tells the story, the people of the village, the supper that goes wrong, the last sled ride and the scene that waits at the end. A few questions step outside the text to the author's own life, the real accident behind the story, and the screen version. It is written for students revising for a reading quiz or a chapter test, teachers who want ready-made multiple-choice questions, and book-club readers checking how closely they read. Every answer comes with a short explanation, so you can play straight through or print the set for a class.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01In Ethan Frome, why do Ethan and Mattie Silver deliberately steer their sled into a tree?
To die together
To die together is Mattie's idea: she begs Ethan to aim for the tree so the two of them need never part. Each of them lives on, and that is the real tragedy.
Q 02In Ethan Frome, which wedding gift, never once used by Zeena, does the cat knock off the supper table and break?
A pickle dish
A pickle dish was too precious for Zeena to use: it lived on the top shelf of the china closet and came down only for spring cleaning, until Mattie laid it out for Ethan.
Q 03In Ethan Frome, Mattie Silver comes to live and work on the farm because she is which relation of Zeena's?
Her cousin
Her cousin, or strictly her cousin's daughter, Mattie was orphaned at twenty, so the family sent her to keep house for Zeena without pay.
Q 04Which fictional New England village, where a power-plant job strands the narrator, is the setting of Ethan Frome?
Starkfield
Starkfield lives up to its name: one villager says Ethan has simply spent too many winters there, as though the place itself wore people down.
Q 05In Ethan Frome, which kind of tree stands at the bottom of the sledding hill and ends the final run?
An elm
An elm had already given the village a scare: an engaged couple nearly hit it on their sled, a near miss Mattie describes to Ethan early in the story.
Q 06Ethan Frome began years earlier as an exercise Edith Wharton wrote to practise which foreign language?
French
French was the language of the first version, a composition she wrote while studying in Paris. She took the story up again several years later and turned it into a novel.
Q 07Edith Wharton, the author of Ethan Frome, became the first woman to win which award for fiction?
The Pulitzer Prize
The Pulitzer Prize went to her a decade after the tale of the snowbound farmer, for a novel about wealthy New Yorkers. The jury had wanted Sinclair Lewis's Main Street, but the board overruled it.
Q 08In Ethan Frome, Ethan picks Mattie Silver out of the crowd at a church dance by her scarf of which colour?
Red
Red follows Mattie through the book: a cherry-coloured scarf at the dance, then a crimson ribbon in her hair on the one evening she and Ethan have the house to themselves.
Q 09In Ethan Frome, how does the sickly Zeena respond once the sledding crash has crippled Ethan and Mattie?
She nurses both survivors
She nurses both survivors for more than twenty years, though before the crash she thought she could not even care for herself. The invalid of the house turns out to be its strongest member.
Q 10Which Irish actor played the title role in the 1993 film of Ethan Frome, opposite Joan Allen and Patricia Arquette?
Liam Neeson
Liam Neeson starred under director John Madden, who later made Shakespeare in Love, the Best Picture winner. Joan Allen was Zeena and Patricia Arquette was Mattie.
Q 11In Ethan Frome, the sledding crash leaves Mattie Silver an invalid after injuring which part of her body?
Her spine
Her spine is what the narrator notices decades later: Mattie turns only her head to look at him, while her body stays limp in its chair by the stove.
Q 12At the end of the prologue to Ethan Frome, what forces the narrator to spend a night inside Ethan's farmhouse?
A blizzard
A blizzard closes the road home, so Ethan takes him in. A villager later tells him he must be the only stranger to set foot in that house for over twenty years.
Q 13In Ethan Frome, which career did Ethan hope to follow before his father's death cut short his college studies?
Engineering
Q 21Which Edith Wharton novel of New York society, filmed by Martin Scorsese, followed Ethan Frome by nine years?
The Age of Innocence
The Age of Innocence reached cinemas in 1993, the very year Ethan's story was filmed too. Daniel Day-Lewis, Michelle Pfeiffer and Winona Ryder led Scorsese's cast.
Q 22Besides his barren farm, which other struggling business does Ethan Frome own in Edith Wharton's novel?
A sawmill
A sawmill stands idle, its wheel still, when the narrator is driven past it. Farm and mill were mortgaged to the limit, which is one reason Ethan could never afford to run off.
Q 23Which former stagecoach driver gives the narrator of Ethan Frome his first account of Ethan's accident?
Harmon Gow
Engineering drew him to towns with lectures, big libraries and people doing things. The narrator who reconstructs his story decades later works in the very field Ethan had to give up.
Q 14In Ethan Frome, what first brought Zeena to the Frome farm before she became Ethan's wife?
Tending his dying mother
Tending his dying mother, Zeena filled a silent house with talk, and after the funeral Ethan dreaded being left alone there. He proposed before he knew what he was doing.
Q 15In Ethan Frome, whom does Zeena want to drive Mattie Silver to her train, until Ethan insists on going himself?
Jotham Powell
Jotham Powell, the Fromes' farmhand, was to take her so that Ethan would stay home that afternoon. Ethan said twice that he would drive her himself, and so set up the final sled ride.
Q 16In Ethan Frome, a sudden vision of what makes Ethan swerve the sled for an instant just before the crash?
His wife's face
His wife's face, twisted and monstrous, seems to thrust itself between him and the tree. He rights the sled and drives straight on.
Q 17In Ethan Frome, what does Ethan hurry to the village to buy so he can secretly mend Zeena's broken wedding gift?
Glue
Glue proves hard to find: one shop has none, and a widow who keeps its rival hunts down her single bottle. Zeena comes home and finds the pieces before Ethan can use it.
Q 18In Ethan Frome, what does Zeena say her new doctor has ordered, giving her grounds to send Mattie Silver away?
A hired girl
A hired girl was already engaged and due the next afternoon, which left no place for Mattie, who worked for nothing. Ethan asked bitterly how he was meant to pay the wages.
Q 19In Ethan Frome, to which town does Zeena travel overnight to see a new doctor, leaving Ethan and Mattie alone?
Bettsbridge
Bettsbridge is where she stays the night with a relative, and the trip gives Ethan and Mattie their only evening alone. It also costs them dearly, since what she brings back from the doctor ends Mattie's stay.
Q 20Which grocer's son, seen by Ethan Frome as a rival, leads Mattie Silver in the last dance at the church?
Denis Eady
Denis Eady then offers Mattie a ride home in his father's cutter, and Ethan, watching from the dark, is thrilled when she turns him down. By the prologue he is the rich village grocer.
Harmon Gow knew every family on his old route, yet his tale had gaps, and the narrator felt the real story lay inside them.
Q 24In the prologue to Ethan Frome, which labour dispute delays the narrator's work and strands him in the village?
A carpenters' strike
A carpenters' strike held up work at the power-house down the line, leaving him anchored for months in the nearest habitable spot, with time to grow curious about Ethan.
Q 25In Ethan Frome, which diagnosis does Zeena bring home from her doctor, a step worse than ordinary 'troubles'?
Complications
Complications set a patient apart in the village: almost everybody had 'troubles' and lived with them for years, but complications were treated as close to a death warrant.
Q 26In Ethan Frome, what stops Ethan from tricking Andrew Hale into a loan on the morning Mattie Silver must leave?
A neighbour's kindness
A neighbour's kindness undoes him: the builder's wife stops her sleigh to say what a hard time he has had, and Ethan finds he cannot lie to the only people who pity him.
Q 27In Ethan Frome, which excuse does Ethan invent to avoid driving Zeena to her train?
Collecting cash for lumber
Collecting cash for lumber was untrue, since the buyer paid only every three months, and Zeena remembered it. When she came home with new expenses in mind, she asked where the fifty dollars was.
Q 28In Ethan Frome, at which picnic spot did Ethan once find Mattie Silver's lost gold locket in the moss?
Shadow Pond
Shadow Pond is where the two stop on their last drive, going the long way round to the station, and Mattie names it as where it all began for her.
Q 29In Ethan Frome, Zeena is short for which grander first name, seen on envelopes from patent-medicine makers?
Zenobia
Zenobia was also a third-century queen of Palmyra who seized much of Rome's eastern empire, a grand echo for a farm wife whose campaigns are fought with pills and silence.
Q 30In the prologue to Ethan Frome, Mrs. Ned Hale, who knows the Fromes' story best, is the narrator's what?
His landlady
His landlady was born Ruth Varnum, a friend of Ethan and Mattie's youth and the first person to see them after the crash. One villager thinks that is why she cannot bear to talk about it.